One of the first things I did when I started this project
was to order a kit of recorders, right?
And so I got these in the mail.
I've never played this one before, so this was the one I played first.
That became...
that's the intro to the Mandalorian theme.
It's soulful, and it's intimate and almost childlike.
I think it's a very broad sound
that a lot of people will have their own relations to the sound.
After I started with a flute, I played a drum over it.
And then I went over to the piano.
Doubling the bass line with the piano.
Very dramatic.
You know something's about to happen, right?
You know Ryan Coogler.
Yeah.
Every time I saw him, for years, brings you up.
Was he your roommate at USC?
Yeah, at USC.
We started working together on student films,
and we've worked together since then.
And so we got together and talked about...
Do you remember the first thing we discussed?
I know that we had a...discussed our common...
And then Donald Glover also.
You were in the studio with him with Lion King.
Yeah, we were working on Lion King,
and I'd been working with him for a few years at that point,
and I also thought it was really cool that you didn't just do music for film,
but you also were part of making songs and popular songs and hip-hop songs.
And I also loved that...what was the short film that you appeared in?
Clapping...
Clapping for the Wrong Reasons.
And you sort of cameo in there.
There's a bit that he does where he's putting some music together,
and it's all these crazy techno-industrial sounds.
I was like,
"There's something kind of cool there for this particular...this particular story for The Mandalorian",
because Star Wars has a sound,
but then we wanted to bring in kind of a dystopic twist to it, kind of like...
Something different.
Which really makes life a lot easier for me,
'cause if you would've said,
"We want it to sound...we want the Star Wars themes here", that would've been like...
It would've been a really difficult situation.
We gave you many reference points, if I remember.
So we talked about Morricone.
Mm-hmm.
And we talked about the scores for the Kurosawa films,
which are also not traditional.
No.
Different was big. Different was key,
and it's something that for me,
I experienced first talking with George about music.
Star Wars can cover a vaster array of sounds and design than you think.
So when you are immediately talking about different sounds,
you brought up Ludwig, and I was like, "Wow, this is like..."
I think of that moment again, and it makes complete sense for what we were doing.
You needed to be the person who wasn't gonna be scared to just march out there.
You guys just made it really fun,
and you took the pressure away and just...
Basically, after every meeting we had, like, "Have fun with it".
You know, just like, encouraging to just experiment.
You were just so open for experimentation.
You also did a great job.
We wouldn't have been that way if we didn't like what you were doing.
To me, this still feels organic somehow.
Um, I found this '70s guitar synthesizer called...
This is the Roland GR-500.
It's a very rare guitar synthesizer.
You can't make computers today sound like this.
So just sitting and playing, and guitar is my first instrument,
so just sitting and playing guitar just...
just with this synth sound, to me, kind of created a bunch of new ideas.
You are Mandalorian!
Your ancestors rode the great Mythosaur.
Surely you can ride this young foal.
Early on, Jon was kind of describing this
as a samurai, gunslinger, Western show,
and he was always talking about it
in different terms and describing the character
in a way that made it feel new to me,
so musically, what does that mean?
It's a one-man journey, you know.
You're just following this guy the whole time.
Musically, you need to tell the story.
Constantly tell the story and show his emotions through music,
because you don't see it on his face.
Obviously, the most important is what the music is and the content of the music.
The melodies and the harmonies and the rhythm.
Being the producer, the music is almost as important,
the way you shape it and the way you make it sound,
because now we have all these tools to make it different.
The first thing I did after reading all the scripts,
I just got into my studio.
I closed myself off for, like, a month with just instruments.
That is where you'll find your quarry.
No computers. Normally, like, you're right sitting by the computer,
and you're transfixed to the computer screen,
but you don't get anything back from the computer.
If you're sitting with a guitar, it's giving you something,
and to me, that connection was key.
Those that live here come to seek peace.
There will be no peace until they're gone.
I made five songs. Like, five 5-minute songs
with all different flavors for different characters or different planets.
After a month of doing that, I went over to the studio where Jon and Dave were,
and I pulled up, like, my themes on my phone.
Immediately when they heard it, they were like,
"That's it. That's so cool. That's the sound. I never heard that before".
You hear it?
This guy.
On a recorder in his bathtub.
I never got a recorder to sound so good.
The bath...in the woods.
- In the woods? - In the woods.
- No. - No.
Go into this delay.
You can't do music for Star Wars
without working on something that looks like a robot, right?
I don't like this.
You always were paranoid.
This is just...I think just something I work with
to just kind of create sounds, still by hands and still by playing.
It feels like a toy, almost.
Like, if you spend hours just turning around and buttons...
and pressing buttons, you know, these things are extremely powerful
and can create interesting soundscapes
that might lead you to another idea.
It's all about creating worlds.
You want to have the whole visual world connected to it through the audio.
No! Burg, what are you doin'?
What?
Intruder alert.
Sounds inspire me to another sound...
kind of like a kindergarten playground, almost, environment.
But that kind of environment, the best creativity came out of me.
Anything, man. You can do anything with this.
To me, this is all by chance, too.
You don't know what's gonna happen.
We started with something,
you know, started something that was very different,
and then we added on another element,
which was kind of like what we talked about,
like the dystopian, the tech.
Like, putting all this organic '70s instruments
through computers and filters and making it modern,
and then the third element, which is the orchestra,
to kind of honor Star Wars, in my opinion.
I wanted to get that same sound that we...
It makes a huge difference when you have 80 people in a room
play their instruments, and all, you know, putting a human touch.
And your wife and your unborn child.
And my wife and my unborn child, who...
She was concertmaster for the sessions.
I was very moved. The whole thing felt so good,
and I was coming off of doing Lion King and features,
so to me, it was the efficiency also, 'cause it was a big orchestra.
But you don't have much time with all those players,
so you just rip through it.
But to me, it was your confidence and the fact that you didn't seem
daunted or scared, and if you were, you didn't let it on,
because the one thing, the biggest lightning rod in Star Wars,
I think, is the music, because it's the one thing...
Everybody has different opinions about which movies they like better
or characters or lines of dialogue or story-lines.
Everybody who loves Star Wars,
they may have their opinions about, you know, the specificities of it,
but everybody is in agreement that the music is iconic and perfect,
and I think our biggest goal is to not feel
like we were just repeating or drawing upon
what had come before as a shortcut to get through to the audience.
Thank you guys so much for being here.
What we're recording today is a show called Mandalorian,
and it's Lucasfilm's first live-action Star Wars show.
Thanks for coming in.
You're the first people to have any flavor of what we're doing.
What you're hearing and playing here is one part of it,
and of course, there's a whole tech element to it
that's gonna be mixed in with it.
But really, it's about humanity,
and it's about humans playing instruments and bringing your artistry to it.
And I'm so excited to be here.
It just rolled away from me.
What score do they have in front of them? Okay, let's start on one and 11, then.
So we'll start with HammerTime, I guess.
HammerTime? That what it's called?
Yeah.
I was once a Foundling.
I know.
Scoring your music with a live orchestra,
that's the best part of this job.
Up until then, you've only been inside your studio just by yourself.
You go to the scoring stage, and everyone's there.
Jon, Dave.
We're all there, and we hear the music being performed
by the best musicians in the world.
And just hear how much it changes and how special it is
and hear them really bring the music to life.
And you look up on the screen, the characters really come alive.
I got goosebumps.
How awesome was that?
It's just the beginning, guys.
The tracking fob is still active.
My sensors indicate that there is a life form present.
This was something completely different from what I've done before.
It's eight episodes.
It's just so much music.
It's almost like scoring three feature films.
I wanted a through line throughout the show.
But then also, every episode is so specifically different.
It takes place in a different world with new characters.
It's almost like every episode is its own story in itself.
That is really fun as a composer.
How can you make everything has its own sound but also tie it together?
As we went along, I was like, "Okay, well, we need a new theme for every episode".
And then obviously, the Mandalorian theme to tie it all together.
There are certain directors that work with composers.
Like, Luc Besson works with his composer from the very beginning,
and then you can play those themes on set.
And for me, it can help me with my writing,
'cause I was still working on season one, season two,
and all of a sudden, it took on its own personality,
and it also amazed me how orchestral it ended up being, too.
So we did have a lot of what people have come to expect from Star Wars in it,
but yet, it's its own thing.
And to think about that, too, we have this
kind of huge benefit but also impediment
in that everybody knows what a Stormtrooper is.
If a Stormtrooper walks onto the set, everyone's like,
"So cool. Look at the Stormtrooper".
That's not how it was when George made Star Wars.
People said, "Can you believe this thing"?
"What are they doing"?
"Can't believe we're doing this".
Everybody wants to make this great.
Everybody wants to give their best.
He had to somehow get the best out of everybody
and explain what the heck a Jedi is and...
It's so overwhelming to think about.
It's a miracle, thinking of it that way.
I think of the challenges we face...
We're taking it from here to here.
Yeah.
He took it from nothing to this.
And at the same time, it can also hurt us,
because people almost put too much grandiose importance on things
that should be fun and light or should just be allowed to play.
Yes, it's Star Wars, but if we lose focus on it being this exciting adventure
that is mainly directed at kids, as George always held to that,
then we're changing it into something it's not meant to be
'cause we're trying to cherish it so much, we're holding it too tight.
The same could've been true of the music, you know, when you did it,
if we just stuck to what was always done and didn't take a chance,
you know, to do something different and yet honor what was there.
It's a very fine line.
I got introduced to Star Wars through the music.
John Williams, what he's done with film music is beyond words.
When I hear it, it makes me feel like a kid again.
You've taken your first step into a larger world.
The impact that it had on me, it really got me into classical music.
His music is so intelligent and emotional.
It's been inspiring going back in time and rediscovering some of his music.
I went back and listened to his other work...
and imagined what made him kind of create the sound that we all know
and just listen to the way that he experimented with sounds
and using modern sounds with an orchestra.
That got me extremely inspired.
I'll never be able to do what John Williams has done,
but I want to try to bring something new and something exciting
and something that hopefully will be able to make kids listen the same way
and get kids excited the way I did.
I have a lot of friends that are film-music nerds.
I think what's been really cool has been seeing how invested people are in this.
Like, there's...people are like, "I love it".
You know, to hear the two different information,
like, people either love it or they really hate it,
and I feel like the people that hated it,
I've heard that it takes them a couple episodes,
and they get used to it, and then by the end,
they're like, "I love this now".
It was our way of saying, "We're not competing with Star Wars".
Star Wars is Star Wars, and we love Star Wars,
and we're not pretending we're Star Wars.
We're our own thing that is an off-shoot of that.
It allowed us to bring new characters into the world,
and it allowed us to show new planets and new time periods,
and all of that, I think people get pretty quickly when they hear the theme.
Well, I think, too, we've talked about with what we did visually,
and it's just true of Star Wars.
It's very generational.
Every couple years, there are kids that have their own Star Wars.
There's the original trilogy,
there's a type of expanded-universe group of people,
there's prequel people, then there become Clone Wars people,
and so on and so on, and they all love Star Wars.
They all love similar-but-different things about Star Wars,
and when you think about it, your music,
those kids will have a powerful connection as they grow up with this
that they become the next generation of people that carry on these stories.